Samuel's Blog

Storm and the stolen generation

January 31st, 2008 at 09:30pm

Good evening Stuart,

It sounds like the storm really hit you up there in Sydney. We were supposed to have a lot of storm activity down here in Canberra but (in my part of town at least) it was just a light show and a bit of rain. Probably a good thing because I'm doing a good impersonation of a bear with a headache at the moment…the excess noise of more thunder and hail would not have been welcome.

Also, I can see the floodgates just starting to leak with the apology to the stolen generation. This call to teach the history of the stolen generation in schools is a tricky one, because which version of the story are we talking about…the "nasty white people stole children" version that I was taught in primary school, or the factual "aboriginal children were removed because the government thought it was a good idea, and the debate has been raging ever since" version. Undoubtedly the "history" will ignore the non-aboriginal children who were "stolen".

I clearly remember the day in primary school where we had to write down our thoughts on apologising to the stolen generation, I wrote my opinion that we shouldn't apologise, and was forced to cross it out and write something about how important it is to apologise. I have no problem with the story of the stolen generation being taught in schools, it is after all an important part of our history, but it should be taught accurately, not in the biased way it was taught when I was in primary school.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

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